Why Aix-en-Provence needs a local guide
Aix is Provence for people who can afford it. Plane trees, fountains, honey-colored stone. The Cours Mirabeau splits the city like a spine. North is the old medieval quarter with its tangle of streets. South is the Mazarin quarter, all 17th-century mansions. Art is everywhere — this was Cézanne's city and it hasn't forgotten.
Aix-en-Provence draws around four million visitors a year, many of them arriving from Marseille on a thirty-minute train ride or from cruise ships docked at the coast. Most walk the Cours Mirabeau, visit Cezanne's studio at Les Lauves, buy calissons, and return by evening. What they miss is the Mazarin quarter south of the Cours — 17th-century hotel particuliers behind massive wooden doors — and the route Cezanne actually walked to reach the Montagne Sainte-Victoire viewpoints he painted obsessively. To become a tour guide in Aix-en-Provence means working at the high end of the Provencal market. The clientele here has money and expects substance. The Place Richelme daily market, the Granet museum's Cezanne collection, the thermal springs that gave the city its name — each one needs a guide who can speak about post-Impressionist painting and Provencal olive oil with equal conviction. Becoming a tour guide in Aix also positions you for the Luberon circuit: Gordes, Roussillon, Bonnieux. That full-day Aix-plus-Luberon format is one of the most profitable guide products in southern France. If you become a tour guide in Aix-en-Provence, you enter a premium market where art knowledge and Provencal culture are the currency.